By Don Hooton
Holly Meyer, a writer for The Tennessean began:
Minister Joey Spann expected to die. He lay bleeding, collapsed on the floor of Burnette Chapel Church of Christ, and watched the masked man who had just shot him in the chest and hand walk farther into the church. “The shots kept going,” Spann said. “I thought he was going to kill everybody.” The gunfire stopped. But Spann, who leads the small congregation in Antioch, still thought he was dying. So, the minister prayed. He didn’t pray to be saved by the church members who applied pressure to his wounds. He didn’t pray to be saved as he heard them call 911. He prayed for forgiveness. “God, I’m sorry for things I didn’t do right,” Spann said in a telephone interview Monday evening from his hospital room.
The near epidemic of tragedies from this shooting a week ago Sunday to the shooting this past Sunday makes us feel broken, angry and confused. For believers, certainly there is ultimate hope beyond life that springs eternal in our heart. For unbelievers who might match such evil so they can challenge the existence of God, my friend Jamey Hinds recently posted: “Some argue that since there’s evil, there must be no good god at all. I argue that since there is good at all, along with beauty, truth and right, God *does* exist.”
But the article above captured my mind with something brother Spann said about his whole ordeal.
He prayed.
Imagine. Bullets streaming. Voices shouting. Mayhem Escalating. And – he prayed. He prayed to the good God he loves to be forgiven. He didn’t pray to judge the perpetrator (although his actions deserve justice). He didn’t even pray to be rescued from the horror. Instead, he prayed – to be saved by God from his own sins. His life was of less concern than his spiritual life with God.
So, it made me think.
I do pray. I haven’t always. I’ve grown in my life with prayer. And through many hardships that never involved bullets, I’ve learned to pray.
I have prayed in praise to the God of heaven for the greatness of His power and majesty I witness all around me. I have prayed to petition the Father of Lights to cascade upon me the direction I should go. I have prayed to the God of all comfort to help those around me. I do pray.
But in the moment of Mayhem, I wonder. Would I have prayed for my rescuers to rescue my life. Would I have prayed for their safety. Would I have prayed for speedy justice for violence against me, bullets whizzing past my head and pain coursing through my body? I had to think what I can imagine – but… I can imagine.
Yet, my brother prayed. Although Stephen prayed, “forgive them” and Jesus prayed, “forgive them,” my brother prayed, “God, I’m sorry for things I didn’t do right.” He didn’t ask to forgive or to protect anyone. He wanted to be the one forgiven.
Words fail how much this says to me. But I am a preacher and I am sure I can come up with a few.
First, we need to learn to pray for our sin. Sinners are we all, John says (1John 1:8-10), and it is indeed God’s mercy we need every day. Living every day like it’s your last is the hardest thing to do because we have to dust off the inventory of our lives and really take count. We could parse the meaning of “sin is lawlessness” and research the Greek on “sin is transgression.” Or, we can look honestly to our heart and say, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!” (Psalm 51:1-2).
We need to learn to pray for us. While we don’t need prayers about us – we need to pray for us. It is not things like cars or jobs, houses or people that ultimately make us full. What satisfies our hearts is being accepted before the great I AM and know who we really are. Commune with God. Have a Heart-to-heart with God. No irreverence meant – and no irreverence permitted. But we should “talk in a familiar manner” because we want to be with him. Be frank. Be honest. Be open. Be candid. Be a person. Pray about how you and He can work to make you more like Him.
And then, we need to learn to pray. “Teach us to pray” was the disciples’ demand of Jesus when they saw that John taught his disciples to pray. Jesus did (Luke 11:1ff). There is a way to make prayer what it should be rather than some flippant word bath we feel we need to take. We need to learn from model Biblical believers and even modern ones who in the face of death, like our brother Joey, have trained their hearts to go to God when sin has burdened them.
And last, we simply need to pray. Prayer isn’t about making our food holy or our night restful. It’s about becoming to God – by coming to God – all we should be. But we need more fervency in our prayers. We need more “without ceasing” in our prayers. And when our brother prayed for his forgiveness, it showed that the imminence of death made him recognize what we all are – sinners. And he wanted above everything else to be right with God. And in the hand of a merciful God, he knew – and we should know – that we can call on Him and “He will be faithful and just to forgive us our trespasses” (1John 1:9).
So today, pray. Learn to pray. Pray for you. And pray for the forgiveness of your sins. But above all things – just pray.